Its remarkable what a difference new computerized and automated equipment makes. Except the British Broadcasting Company doesn’t think so. One of the most controversial tests or experiments showing that homeopathic potentized dilutions are active is utilizing diluted and homoeopathically potentized histamines on human basophils. The BBC, on the show Horizons cobbled together a “scientific” experiment disproving that there was an effect. Yet, the experiment has been successfully replicated in many laboratories around the world. Other notable scientists including Dr. Madeline Ennis, a Professor of Pharmacology, at Queen’s University, Belfast successfully showed that it worked. The problem is that the counting is open to human error.

Well, now the controversy is over. A new technique carefully utilizing modern computerized equipment called flow cytometry protocol has produced POSITIVE results.

The conclusion from this new experiment was “Using a strictly standardized flow cytometry protocol and a new dilution/succussion procedure, we have shown that low and high dilutions of histamine inhibit CD203c up-regulation in anti-IgE stimulated basophils.”

Unfortunately the BBC continues to rebroadcast their 2002 faulty but controversial experiment.

The Telegraph, a UK news outlet reports that in spite of criticism and consternation by some opponents, “Prince Charles’s faith in [homeopathy] the alternative medicine is unwavering”.

The Royal family has long been devoted to the practice of homeopathy – in fact, to this day, there is a court homeopath, a position that seems as anachronistic as the royal horologist or the master of the Queen’s music. The Queen’s father, George VI, was a firm convert to the cause, as was his father, George V.
Indeed, Her Majesty is not only devoted to homeopathy, which she also uses on her animals, but the broader spectrum of alternative medicine – and it is said that her avoidance of illness during her 60 years on the throne is due to supplementing her conventional medical regime with herbal remedies.

In a recent article in The Atlantic, many main stream medical doctors such as Dr. Gertz have come out in favour of homeopathy in spite of venomous attacks by skeptics. The author of the article writes:

Morie Gertz, a hematologist, who chairs the Mayo Clinic’s internal-medicine department: “Most of the doctors here were top of their medical-school class, top of their residency, blah, blah, blah,” he told me. “That’s technical mastery. That doesn’t make them effective healers. Over the past 30 years, I’ve seen hundreds of patients who clearly feel they’ve benefited from alternative therapies. It’s not my job to tell them they shouldn’t feel better. And I wouldn’t tell patients they shouldn’t try alternative medicine if they want to—we need to follow the clues patients give us about what might help them. If a patient chooses to walk away from the therapy I’ve prescribed and go to an alternative therapist instead, that’s not the fault of alternative medicine; it’s because I’ve failed as a doctor to do a good job of making my case in terms that are important to the patient.”

Gertz is among the many physicians who dismiss the lack of supportive randomized-trial data as a reason to write off alternative medicine. “The randomized trial is a very high bar,” he says. “Eighty percent of what I do here isn’t based on randomized-trial data.”

Physicians routinely write “off-label” prescriptions, Gertz says—that is, prescriptions that call for drugs to treat conditions for which those drugs have not been officially approved. It’s a perfectly legal and ethical practice, and even one that physicians consider essential, accounting for about a fifth of all U.S. prescriptions. “It’s off-label not because it doesn’t work, but because there’s no good randomized-trial data on it. In the same way, we may not have great evidence that alternative medicine works, but that’s very different from saying it doesn’t work.”

In an excellent article, Lionel Milgrom PhD discusses the new development of a narrow minded “scientism” movement that is opposing homeopathy. He distinguishes real science from scientism as he says scientism is a narrow minded belief system and unscientific.

The article is extremely well written in both an accessible and academic style. It provides an insight into a “draconian approach” to medicine and homeopathy. It also points out that some of the main opponents of homeopathy, (who have financially benefited from their opposition) are also academically bereft. The article is an important read as to what is happening in the UK and around the world.

Lionel Milgrom comes with a strong expert background in science but at the same time has fully embraced homeopathy. He has been in practice as a professional homeopath (LCH, MARH, RHom) for over a decade. He has also had a parallel career as a research scientist for well over 30 years, with over 70 academic papers published in leading chemistry journals (BSc, MSc, PhD, CChem, FRSC). Lionel also writes and comments about science and been a sometime broadcaster on the subject.”

He goes onto say that scientism is

Best described by British geneticist Professor Steve Jones as part of a, “….broad church full of narrow minds trained to know even more about even less.”,

Milgrom describes how two individuals have purposely promulgated unsubstantiated opinions about homeopathy as fact:

Nevertheless, Baum and Ernst continuously assert the results of homeopathic prescribing lack efficacy beyond a placebo response. [8] Closer examination of this claim reveals that it is based on just two systematic reviews, both by Ernst: [25, 26] as if his are the only … studies, and that those of others [21, 22, 24, 27-29] should be discounted. But vaunting hubris aside, Baum and Ernst are just plain wrong: by end of 2009, 142 RCTs of homeopathy had been published in peer-reviewed journals. In terms of statistically significant results, 74 of these trials were able to draw firm conclusions; 63 were positive (patients given a homeopathic medicine improved significantly more than the comparison group given either an inactive placebo or established conventional treatment), and 11 were negative (no significant difference was seen between the action of the homeopathic medicine and the comparison group). [30]

Fortunately, their scientific ‘fundamentalism’ is not shared by all in medicine. Thus, top UK cancer clinician Karol Sikora (around 60% of whose patients use some form of CAM as adjuvant therapies) roundly excoriated attempts by what he calls ‘inexperienced’, ‘armchair physicians’, to tell him how to do his job, while at the same time excoriating their attempts to rid the NHS of its CAM services as ‘Stalinist’. [34]